An agriculture expect says a relatively simple solution could provide food security to sub-Saharan Africa: roads. More paved roads would bring rural communities out of economic isolation.
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“In a Spiegel interview, Nobel Prize-winning German author Günter Grass talks about why he doesn’t fear death and why he thinks the Brothers Grimm had ‘oral sex with vowels’.”
“I still think that in going the way it has gone, policy debate has coarsened itself.” Mark Oppenheimer at Slate laments the exaggerated competition in once-civil team sports.
Despite widespread skepticism over the ensuing renewal of peace talks between Israel and Palestine, The Economist says the negotiations are more promising than Bush’s attempts.
Making $70 million in just the last five months, author James Patterson is America’s, and the world’s, richest author. The catch? He employs a team of five people to write his books.
“New technology could allow people to dictate letters and search the internet simply by thinking, according to researchers at Intel who are behind a mind-reading computer project.”
“Rising temperatures have helped blunt plants’ ability to pull carbon from the atmosphere, according to a study published yesterday in Science.” Is it a threshold in the warming cycle?
The stimulus versus austerity debate is culturally relative, says an economist for The Guardian. What matters most is that each country reassure its entrepreneurs that demand will rise in the future.
What is the relation between money and power? Will China use the profits of its growing economy for peaceful domestic purposes or to build a large military like the U.S. and U.K. did?
Building on yesterday’s post, today I examine some more implications of the claim made by The Times of London that it found the names of Afghan informants in the secret […]
Charlatan is one of my top two goat-related works of narrative non-fiction. Brock Pope’s gripping account of the rise and fall of one of the most flamboyant and deadly quacks […]
Here is a puzzle: if promiscuity has increased over the past century and if the cause of that increase was really a fall in the risk of pregnancy, then why […]
Big Think has called August “The Month of Thinking Dangerously” and served up one radical idea each day in the Dangerous Ideas blog. The ideas started off dangerously enough, with […]
“Obama has promised to halve the the US deficit by 2013, but nobody seems to know how he’ll manage it.” Prospect Magazine on the uncertain future of the American current account.
Can WikiLeak’s release of tens of thousands of secret documents accurately be called ‘a leak’, or is ‘gush’ more appropriate, or is that just silly? One author on the history of the political leak.
The governor of Indiana is ‘a likeable wonk’, says The Economist. This is one reason he might run for President. The other is that the GOP’s current prospective candidates are ‘nauseating’.
“When people search [the Internet], they aren’t just looking for nouns or information; they are looking for action.” A venture capitalist says search engines are changing for the better.
A Japanese inventor has created a machine that turns ordinary plastic waste into oil. The oil can be used as an engine lubricant or further refined to make gasoline, diesel and kerosene.
“Not every investor is trembling with anxiety over the next financial blowup. Some are embracing the market’s volatility—and constructing portfolios to profit from it.”
A history professor at Boston University says the Iraq War is far from over. “The war launched to achieve regime change in Baghdad metastasized into three wars.” None of which are over, he says.
The government of Chile is recruiting American entrepreneurs to spend six months starting a business in Santiago, offering each candidate $40,000 and a one-year visa to the country.
New York Times journalist Andrew Sorkin discusses his take on the Wall Street crash, whether financial CEOs are evil, the future of journalism and how business is likely to change in the future.
Michael Kinsley at The Atlantic vents his frustration over political polls that entitle people to their often ludicrously incorrect opinions and ask questions fit only for experts.
I just had to sign a loyalty oath as a condition of my employment at a California state university. The California constitution requires all state employees to sign the oath. […]
Christopher Hitchens’ column this month in Vanity Fairreflects the best of the writer’s intellect and prose. Upon learning of his cancer diagnosis, Hitch writes: “My father had died, and very […]
Today and tomorrow I’ll hopefully make peace with my curiosity about WikiLeaks and the accusation that it disclosed the names and locations of Afghan informants serving the U.S. and coalition […]
This morning I posted on a fascinating forthcoming study that concludes that generalized messages about science are more impactful on audiences than similarly framed messages that include details on scientific […]
Over at Dr. Kaku’s Universe here at Big Think, Michio asks for reader input on what they find compelling about science fiction including as I focused on yesterday, your favorite […]
When attempting to communicate effectively with the public about a science-related debate, which is more important, framing the message or conveying science-based facts about the topic? A forthcoming study (Word) […]
The corruption of U.S. financial markets, whose CEOs habitually buy up expensive art, is mirrored by an unregulated art market where it is difficult to tell between hoax and truth.